Informed consent

2018 ◽  
Vol 100-B (6) ◽  
pp. 687-692 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. J. McCormack ◽  
A. Gulati ◽  
J. Mangwani
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Informed Consent ◽  
The United States ◽  
Health Board ◽  
Legal Cases ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
National Guidance ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Medical Paternalism ◽  
English Speaking World

Our aim in this paper was to investigate the guidelines and laws governing informed consent in the English-speaking world. We noted a recent divergence from medical paternalism within the United Kingdom, highlighted by the Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board ruling of 2015. We investigated the situation in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States of America. We read the national guidance regarding obtaining consent for surgical intervention for each country. We used the references from this guidance to identify the laws that helped inform the guidance, and reviewed the court documents for each case. There has been a trend towards a more patient-focused approach in consent in each country. Surgeons should be aware of the guidance and legal cases so that they can inform patients fully, and prevent legal problems if outdated practices are followed. Cite this article: Bone Joint J 2018;100-B:687–92.

The Booker Prize and Post-Imperial British Literature

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Holmes
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
British Literature ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Anglophone Literature ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Commonwealth Of Nations ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
British Colonies

In the particular and peculiar case of the Booker Prize, regarded as the most prestigious literary award in the United Kingdom (as measured by economic value to the author and publisher, and total audience for the awards announcement), the cultural and economic valences of literary prizes collide with the imperial history of Britain, and its after-empire relationships to its former colonies. From its beginnings, the Booker prize has never been simply a British prize for writers in the United Kingdom. The Booker’s reach into the Commonwealth of Nations, a loose cultural and economic alliance of the United Kingdom and former British colonies, challenges the very constitution of the category of post-imperial British literature. With a history of winners from India, South Africa, New Zealand, and Nigeria, among many other former British colonies, the Booker presents itself as a value arbitrating mechanism for a majority of the English-speaking world. Indeed, the Booker has maintained a reputation for bringing writers from postcolonial nations to the attention of a British audience increasingly hungry for a global, cosmopolitan literature, especially one easily available via the lingua franca of English. Whether and how the prize winners avoid the twin colonial pitfalls of ownership by and debt to an English patron is the subject of a great deal of criticism on the Booker, and to understand the prize as a gatekeeper and tastemaker for the loose, baggy canon of British or even global Anglophone literature, there must be a reckoning with the history of the prize, its multiplication into several prizes under one umbrella category, and the form and substance of the novels that have taken the prize since 1969.

scholarly journals Online Readability of COVID-19 Health Information: a Comparison between Four English Speaking Countries

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy P Worrall ◽  
Mary J Connolly ◽  
Aine O'Neill ◽  
Murray O'Doherty ◽  
Kenneth P Thornton ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Health Information ◽  
General Public ◽  
Information Source ◽  
The United States ◽  
Online Information ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
English Speaking

Abstract Introduction: The internet is now the first line source of health information for many people worldwide. In the current Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) global pandemic, health information is being produced, revised, updated and disseminated at an increasingly rapid rate. The general public are faced with a plethora of misinformation regarding COVID-19 and the readability of online information has an impact on their understanding of the disease. The accessibility of online healthcare information relating to COVID-19 is unknown. We sought to evaluate the readability of online information relating to COVID-19 in four English speaking regions: Ireland, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, and compare readability of website source provenance and regional origin.Methods: The Google® search engine was used to collate the first twenty webpage URLs for three individual searches for ‘COVID’, ‘COVID-19’, and ‘coronavirus’ from Ireland, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. The Gunning Fog Index (GFI), Flesch-Kincaid Grade (FKG) Score, Flesch Reading Ease Score (FRES), Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG) score were calculated to assess the readability. Results: There were poor levels of readability webpages reviewed, with only 17.2% of webpages at a universally readable level. There was a significant difference in readability between the different webpages based on their information source (p <0.01). Public Health organisations and Government organisations provided the most readable COVID-19 material, while digital media sources were significantly less readable. There were no significant differences in readability between regions. Conclusion: Much of the general public have relied on online information during the pandemic. Information on COVID-19 should be made more readable, and those writing webpages and information tools should ensure universal accessibility is considered in their production. Governments and healthcare practitioners should have an awareness of the online sources of information available, and ensure that readability of our own productions is at a universally readable level which will increase understanding and adherence to health guidelines.

scholarly journals The slow death of a dogma? The prohibition of legislative history in the 20th century

2020 ◽  
pp. 147377952096795
Author(s):  
John J Magyar
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Statutory Interpretation ◽  
Legislative History ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
State Of Affairs

It is commonly believed that the rule prohibiting reliance on legislative history as an aid to statutory interpretation was firmly in place in the United Kingdom, and indeed throughout the English-speaking common law jurisdictions of the world, long before the turn of the 20th century; and that the rule was set aside in the case of Pepper v Hart in 1992. However, an examination of the relevant cases and the canonical textbooks by Maxwell and Craies reveal that the rule was subject to a significant amount of disagreement at the turn of the 20th century, particularly with respect to the admissibility of commissioners’ reports to uncover the mischief of a statutory provision. This disagreement would not be completely resolved until the 1960s. With respect to other types of legislative history, there were prominent exceptional cases over the course of the 20th century; and there was a gradual acceptance of more types of legislative history as aids to statutory interpretation during the decades leading up to Pepper v Hart. Thus, the simple narrative description that the rule was firmly in place until it was set aside in 1992 must give way to a more complex narrative of disagreement and gradual decline. Meanwhile, as the rule lost traction in the United Kingdom over the course of the 20th century, a growing accumulation of justifications for the rule has been assembled, and an ongoing debate has been taking place about the efficacy of reliance on legislative history. Based upon the different trajectories followed in other English-speaking common law jurisdictions, and particularly the United States, the decline of the rule was not inevitable. It follows that the current state of affairs is likely to change over time.

scholarly journals Readability of Online COVID-19 Health Information: A Comparison between Four English Speaking Countries

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy P Worrall ◽  
Mary J Connolly ◽  
Aine O'Neill ◽  
Murray O'Doherty ◽  
Kenneth P Thornton ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Health Information ◽  
General Public ◽  
Information Source ◽  
The United States ◽  
Online Information ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
English Speaking

Abstract Background: The internet is now the first line source of health information for many people worldwide. In the current Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) global pandemic, health information is being produced, revised, updated and disseminated at an increasingly rapid rate. The general public are faced with a plethora of misinformation regarding COVID-19 and the readability of online information has an impact on their understanding of the disease. The accessibility of online healthcare information relating to COVID-19 is unknown. We sought to evaluate the readability of online information relating to COVID-19 in four English speaking regions: Ireland, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, and compare readability of website source provenance and regional origin.Methods: The Google® search engine was used to collate the first twenty webpage URLs for three individual searches for ‘COVID’, ‘COVID-19’, and ‘coronavirus’ from Ireland, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. The Gunning Fog Index (GFI), Flesch-Kincaid Grade (FKG) Score, Flesch Reading Ease Score (FRES), Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG) score were calculated to assess the readability. Results: There were poor levels of readability webpages reviewed, with only 17.2% of webpages at a universally readable level. There was a significant difference in readability between the different webpages based on their information source (p <0.01). Public Health organisations and Government organisations provided the most readable COVID-19 material, while digital media sources were significantly less readable. There were no significant differences in readability between regions. Conclusion: Much of the general public have relied on online information during the pandemic. Information on COVID-19 should be made more readable, and those writing webpages and information tools should ensure universal accessibility is considered in their production. Governments and healthcare practitioners should have an awareness of the online sources of information available, and ensure that readability of our own productions is at a universally readable level which will increase understanding and adherence to health guidelines.

Training and Education as a Means of Increasing Equity in Child Health Teaching of Undergraduates

PEDIATRICS ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 112 (Supplement_3) ◽  
pp. 747-748
Author(s):  
Mitch Blair
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Learning Styles ◽  
The United States ◽  
Good Evidence ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Protective Mechanism ◽  
Training And Education ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
National Guidance

The Issue. Several primary sources of influence shape pediatric curricula in the United Kingdom and the United States. The national guidance given by the General Medical Council1 in the United Kingdom and by the Future of Pediatric Education2 document in the United States focus on developing a group of physicians who respond to the relevant needs of contemporary children. The competition among interest groups for time in curricula, including our interests in advancing community pediatrics, determines what is taught and the extent to which it is taught. Strategies to engage and motivate students so that they learn what we want them to learn ultimately will define our success in medical education and as medical educators. In approaching the above noted challenges, I have made 3 assumptions about learners. First, most students come from middle-class backgrounds and have little exposure to what life is really like for our patients and their families. Second, there is good evidence now that students’ learning styles are set from the time they enter medical school.3 Contemporary students are very assessment driven, and our residents are adopting these same sorts of attitudes. It is a protective mechanism for survival in a very crammed curriculum. The third assumption is that students have a wealth of experiences and creative energy, and there is much that we can do to harness them.

Nathan Dunn (1782–1844) as Anti-Opium China Trader and Sino-Western Cultural Intermediary

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Goldstein
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Trading Strategies ◽  
Opium Trade ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Cultural Intermediary

American trader Nathan Dunn’s experience as a private China trader shows that one individual can indeed make a difference. A practicing Quaker who refused to buy or sell opium, Dunn pioneered innovative trading strategies while championing a mercantile code that was unusual for his day. At a time when few Americans regarded the opium trade as inappropriate, he showed that it was possible to succeed in the Canton Trade without dealing in opium. Dunn was also a dedicated educator of Chinese culture. He seems to have found his life’s purpose in bringing an understanding of China to English-speaking audiences. Unlike virtually all of his contemporaries except for Robert Waln Jr., his aim was not to trade and get wealthy purely for the sake of personal aggrandizement. Rather, it was to become a self-educated, self-proclaimed advocate for China in the United States and later in the United Kingdom. The wealth that he gained through trade provided funds needed to realize his higher calling. In addition, he was arguably the pioneer of Sinological museology and ethnology in both the United States and Europe. Because of the earnestness and thoroughness of his quest, he elevated both sciences beyond the level of randomly collecting ‘cabinets of curiosities’. Shortly after he established a ‘Chinese Museum’ in Philadelphia in 1838, several other similar museums appeared in America and England, although none were as focussed and all-encompassing or as positively inclined as his.

A Scale for Measuring a Tory Streak in Canada and the United States

1977 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 597-614
Author(s):  
Tom Truman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Attitude Scale ◽  
English Canada ◽  
The Political ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Canadian

This paper reports the making and testing of an attitude scale to be used in measuring toryism-conservatism in both English Canada and the United States (and any other English-speaking country). The fact that the scale is to be used on both sides of the border affects the kinds of items included in the scale, but more of that later.The inspiration for creating the toryism-conservatism scale came from Gad Horowitz's contention that the political cultures of both the United States and English-speaking Canada are Lockean liberal in content, but the English-Canadian political culture is different from the American because it has a “tory streak” which came in with the United Empire Loyalists, the expelled American “tories,” and was reinforced by later immigrations from the United Kingdom.

Ending the Physical Punishment of Children by Parents in the English-speaking World: The Impact of Language, Tradition and Law

2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 278-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernadette J. Saunders
Keyword(s):  
Physical Violence ◽  
The United States ◽  
Physical Punishment ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Attitudes And Practices ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Adults And Children ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
The Impact

Ending the physical punishment of children remains an enormous challenge. In societies which tolerate even limited physical punishment as discipline or control, it is a response to children that adults may unthinkingly adopt simply because they can. This paper primarily focuses on the language, traditions and law prevailing in English-speaking, common law countries – Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom – that have ratified the CRC but have not yet fully outlawed physical punishment. New Zealand, the first English-speaking country to ban physical punishment, and the United States which has neither ratified the CRC nor fully outlawed physical punishment, are also discussed. Separately, language, traditional attitudes and practices, and laws impacting children’s lives are considered, with a view to envisioning a status quo where adults and children are accorded equal respect as human beings and any degree of physical violence towards children is regarded as an aberration.

scholarly journals Confession to Make: Inadvertent Confessions and Admissions in United Kingdom and United States Police Contexts

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luna Filipović
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Legal Representation ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Questioning Techniques ◽  
English Speaking

Previous studies have addressed many different kinds of confessions in police investigations – real, false, coerced, fabricated – and highlighted both psychological and social mechanisms that underlie them. Here, we focus on inadvertent confessions and admissions, which occur when a suspect appears to be confessing without being fully aware of doing so, or when police officers believe they have a confession or admission of guilt when in fact this is not the case. The goal of the study is to explain when, how and why these confessions and admissions occur as well as how they are dealt with in two different jurisdictions, the United States and the United Kingdom. We use a discourse analysis approach because inadvertent confessions and admissions of guilt are the product of miscommunication – they happen because the speaker’s meaning and the hearer’s meaning are misaligned. The data consist of 50 interviews from the United Kingdom and 50 interrogations from the United States with both English-speaking and non-English speaking suspects. Our results demonstrate that inadvertent confessions can occur in both locales due to reliance on inference, which is inevitable since inference is the backbone of any human communication, as well as due to additional factors such as linguistic, cultural and procedural issues. We found that these phenomena are more frequent and less well controlled for in the United States context due to (a) no systematic checking of understanding, (b) adversarial questioning techniques and an absence of legal representation, and (c) lack of professional, high-quality interpreting. We discuss the implications of our findings for current efforts to improve access to justice, custodial procedures and language services, and we make recommendations for the implementation of our research in professional practice.

scholarly journals Improving Tertiary Student Outcomes in An Evidence-based Accountability Policy Framework

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Zepke ◽  
Linda Leach
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Student Outcomes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Framework ◽  
Tertiary Student ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Accountability Policy ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World

Tertiary student retention, progression and achievement have become major policy issues in New Zealand, and the English-speaking world generally. Both the human and financial costs of non-completion have led to policy settings dedicated to improving student outcomes. After briefly sketching policy developments in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States, the article examines the New Zealand government’s emerging policy framework for improving student outcomes. It suggests that concern for student learning and success is justified, but questions some of the underlying assumptions behind the policies. These, the article argues, focus on system-wide accountability using crude statistical indicators that can lead to sanctions. The paper uses retention research from overseas and New Zealand to test both assumption and criticism. The article suggests that evidence does not support a generic and punitive approach to improve student outcomes. It suggests a reframing of both accountability and research evidence to produce an alternative approach to student outcomes policy.

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